Advice On Making It Through Stressful Seasons

1. Get qualified people to help you.

2. One of my executive pastors has a construction background, and he was in charge of the new building project.

3. My other executive is artistic and enjoys the design aspect, so he picked out most of the color with a professional designer. He also oversaw the selection of AVL.

4. Give people latitude to lead with good accountability structures.

5. Injoy Stewardship Services partnered with us for the CRAZY stewardship campaign. They have been a huge help.

6. I am a planner, so I kept my date nights with my wife and my family date nights with my wife and kids. This is one of the things that kept my family healthy during this season.

7. I communicated with my wife that we were getting ready to enter a crazy period of ministry. She already knew it was coming, but it's great for us to communicate so that we are on the same page.

8. I learned from our first building project not to freak out when we miss deadlines. It's part of building. We wanted to move into our new building in the fall of 2008. Then we thought we could for sure be in the new building by February or early March 2009. We didn't move into our new building until the first week of May, and we didn't have any audio, video or lights (we rented it). Our kids’ space has been a mess the last month and the concrete was still being stained. Oh well, life goes on and God is good!

9. Plan some time off when the project is over. The temptation is to keep pressing forward because right after the new building is done, many guests arrive and the church experiences great growth. You have to take some time to unwind and catch your breath. Most of our church will never know how much leadership energy I spent leading our church through a multi-million dollar building project while maintaining my daily and weekly responsibilities. There are still people who will ask me what I do all week. They think I prepare a message on Saturday night and preach on Sundays! LOL!

10. Stay close to Jesus! I can't overemphasize this. Keep your daily bible reading and prayer times going strong. The temptation is to neglect your time with God because everything is so hectic. Don't you dare do it! I've been pretty consistent in my devotional life, and God has given me strength during this season. I LOVE YOU, LORD!